This was a great read, enjoyed it thoroughly, was hooked from the first page, loads of twists and turns, would recommend it x

Although this book can be very dark in places I enjoyed reading it I wasnt expecting that ending would recommend

This was a very disturbing book. The whole thing is written in the form of a diary and goes through many years in the life of Ruby, the daughter of a serial killer. It is very disturbing but I quite enjoyed the complexity of the main character... the love she feels for her daddy and the way she quite does'nt understand the world. 

perfect october read

I’ve always enjoyed books written in diary form. There’s something about reading someone’s inner private thoughts. 

This diary though. It was something else! 
This story is being told by a young girl throughout the years. It’s definitely disturbing but that’s the whole point. 

It was a bit slow to start but it definitely picks up and gets super interesting. Our main character Ruby is 7 years old when we first meet, and kids that age just aren’t that interesting. But once it picked up I couldn’t put the book down! There were some parts where even I was a little disturbed. It was somehow worse knowing these were a child’s voice. 

If you enjoy dark reads I definitely recommend this. I’m super annoyed with myself for waiting so long to read it.

Thank you netgalley for the copy of this book.

This is a captivating and dark read that sucked me in from page 1. If you're a fan of Dateline or true crime, you will love this read. I love that this is unique and is told from a different perspective. Chilling and dark, but totally worth the read.

One of the best thrillers that I've read in forever! 

Detwiler does an incredible job of giving a new and intriguing perspective on the entire serial killer genre. And the fact that you get to see the main character grow up makes it that much more interesting. 

The only reason why I'm not giving this book a full five stars is because I didn't totally love the ending - but everything else was perfect! 

Thank you too Netgalley and the publisher for letting me enjoy this great thriller!

That title nearly killed me! Applause to this book! It is jam-packed with chills and so much frustrating in the sense that you want to know what really happens. It is poignant and kinda love it.

The Diary of a Serial Killer’s Daughter by L.A. Detwiler is a psychological thriller.

First, let me thank NetGalley, and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)

Ruby Marlowe keeps a diary, and as she grows into her teenage years, a number of things became evident.  She has no friends because they live outside of town.  She is considered weird, treated differently, and bullied.  But she has her diary, and her poetry, and her daddy.  She loves the colour red.

Ruby's mother died when she was two, and her father is her whole world.  She discovers what he does in their garage, but keeps his secret.  She wonders what really happened to her mother, and discovers some unsettling things.  She wonders if she should tell somebody about the women who her father takes into the garage.  She wonders if, perhaps, she is a little like her father.

Eventually Ruby wonders if she is ready to live her own life, instead of one spent protecting her fathers secrets.  But a secret of her own changes everything.


My Opinions:   

This book grabbed my attention immediately.  The title said it all, and the first few pages ensured I wasn't putting it down any time soon.  It is a dark tale, and I loved every minute of it!

The whole story is told from the pages of Ruby's diary.  It started when she was 7 and ended at age 17 (with a few years missed here and there).  I loved the idea of this.  I also think the wording in the first couple years was a little too advanced for a 7 year old.  However, it did make for good reading.  I loved her poems.

This one isn't for the faint of heart.  It's vivid in it's gruesomeness.  Lots of blood.  That part didn't bother me.  The bullying did -- it was brutal.  

Thinking of monsters/serial killers, the book looked into whether they are born with the tendancy, or grew into the tendancy because of outside influences  (nature/nurture).  

Overall, this was a well-written, dark, disturbing story.  I absolutely loved it.  It's going to stick with me for a while.

The Diary of A Serial Killer's Daughter by L.A. Detwiler
 This was written from the daughters point of view in her diaries entries from the time she was young till about 16. Very interesting and disturbing, a little slow paced for me but it did hold my interest and I wanted to know what was going to happen  with Ruby and her father. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this and leave my opinion.

Many thanks to the author / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. 

If you knew your father’s darkest secret, would you turn him in?
What if his secret was connected to you?

I was sold on this based on the title alone.

I really enjoyed the format and the story line was chilling and brilliantly done although quite dark and there are a couple of triggers. It definitely sheds a light on the nature v. nurture issue.

I would definitely recommend this book!

The is written from the point of view of a child and continues until she is a teen. The serial killer’s daughter keeps a diary of her father’s kills in the garage late at night. He never realized that his daughter knows of his secret let alone watches him kill the women. The daughter is described as “weird” and “slow”, she appears to have some characteristics of ASD and kids at school are mean to here. The book seems to be written for young adults based on the writing style and not the content. It was a quick read with little depth.

The Diary of a Serial Killer's daughter is an experience. It follows the autistic daughter of a serial killer from the age of 7 to 16 and we get a look into her mind as she goes about her life, see what her relationship is like with her dad, as well as watch her mature and struggle with what she believes.

Originally what she thought to be a game as a child, she eventually learns as she grows is her father committing murders in their garage. A secret he keeps and one he doesn't know she knows because she is a good secret keeper.

This book can be hard to read at times either due to how her writing style changes as she grows (as most everyone's does), so it drags a bit, but also how her hyper-fixation on blood can make a person uncomfortable. I definitely do not recommend this to anyone who doesn't like child characters, who doesn't like talk of blood, doesn't like obsessive thoughts in characters.

Also while the autistic representation is written well in terms of Ruby herself as a character, anyone who goes into this without knowing specific traits / characteristics (such as hyper-fixation), may not grasp things in the best light as those who know of these things.

This was a great psychological thriller, full of suspense. The story itself was excellent and the characters were interesting. The first book I have read by this author and I will be looking out for more in the future. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys reading this genre.
 Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book

I'd heard great things about this so I was so excited when I was approved - and what a great read! Very involved and exciting

I loved this! It's so disturbing, yet so enjoyable. It is, as the title suggests, literally just pages from the diary of a serial killer's daughter, Ruby. It starts out when she's 7, so her vocabulary and world view is still limited, and the pages are a bit repetetive and slow. But it really picks up and it was so gripping all the way to the end, I just had to know what would happen.

I loved The Widow Next Door.

I liked this as well. It had strange and interesting characters and the writing was quite good. The pacing though was a bit slow for me. 

The narrator, Ruby, isn’t your typical kid. She seems to be on the spectrum of OCD or autism - the diagnose isn’t important but it reflects in the journal entries. At the beginning, when Ruby is young the entries seem to be quite mature. Unfortunately, as Ruby ages the entries don’t really change so much so they don’t seem mature enough to represent the aging process. 

This was interesting and I found myself needing to see how the story ended. It was a satisfying conclusion however it was strange in the choices - Ruby is odd, but intelligent. I feel she would understand that the items left behind would not be well received. (Spoilers have me writing this review strangely). It was interesting and enjoyable but at time I wanted a quicker pace. Overall, I would recommend. 

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Xpresso Book Tours for a copy in exchange for a review.

I have so much to say about this book that it's hard to know where to start. This book looked interesting to me because I read the book by BTK's daughter and I found it fascinating. Of course one was fiction and one was non-fiction but I was drawn to it all the same.

The book is solely diary entries of a girl, Ruby, who figures out that her dad is a serial killer, but instead of being scared, she was intrigued. I had some issues with the development of the character, Ruby. She finds out her dad is a serial killer when she is very young by spying on him in their garage. She first thinks the blood is him making art, then sometimes she starts to recognize it as he is killing them and causing them to bleed but sometimes she is unsure what is happening. She is also really precise about somethings like writing at the same time every time she writes but then she doesn't write every day. She seems to have a mix of OCD/autism/anxiety disorder/possibly other developmental delays but this was never defined. It is referred to many times as her having a "condition". I find this to be bizarre as these are things that can be diagnosed and I just felt that her development from a child into her teenage years could have been a bit more focused to fully establish who she is. I didn't think her development as she aged jived with how she spoke all of the time.

The book also spends quite a bit of time on bullying which is heartbreaking. Ruby is bullied at school and it's interesting to think about if this had been different would she not have the anger to agree with her father that killing was an acceptable thing to do? I did find it a little unrealistic that the most popular girl in school wanted a boy who liked Ruby when she was painted as the outcast of the school. Ruby's mom, who died when she was two, was also not a very nice person although who knows what the cause and effect was of her marrying someone she feared.

In the end Ruby's diary is left out and found... and I just can't understand how she would think this was a smart thing to do.

I guess it sounds like my review is very negative but I don't mean it to be. I actually liked the book but I did think the above things really could've improved it overall. I definitely couldn't put the book down at times and I loved the format of having it be journal entries completely from Ruby's perspective over the course of many years.

This book was horrifying, chilling , fascinating and intruiging. You name it it had it. Very powerfully written from the daughters perspective. It is in the form of a diary so it had a totally different perspective. I loved it.

I was sold on this premise from the start. We so often read/hear about/see things about serial killers, and their own madness, but we don’t nearly so often get the opportunity to see the kind of havoc they can wreak on those who are close to them.

This story is told by Ruby Marlowe, daughter of a serial killer (so it’s not just a clever name) via entries into her personal diaries spanning from the time she is 7 years old until she is 16.

We know fairly early on that Ruby is special. She has some unnamed ‘condition’ (which to me sounds like she might be on the autism spectrum based on symptoms, but dammit man, I’m a writer, not a doctor) which makes it difficult for her to fit in with her peers. She doesn’t deal well with over-stimulation, she’s not very sociable, and when she gets stressed out she does things like rock back and forth, hit her head on things, or scratches her neck until it bleeds.

As the synopsis points out, Ruby becomes aware of her father’s crimes – what she refers to as his killing game. Her diaries pick up for the reader when she first becomes aware of the “game.”

When Ruby comes to realize that her life can be different – that she doesn’t have to live with the weight of always having to protect her daddy, will she take it? Or will she choose to continue to live a life that is solely comprised of each of them protecting the other? “Just Daddy and Ruby. Ruby and Daddy.”

On a side note: this book has proven, once and for all that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer has ruined serial murderers for me forever. I always picture them as Michael Rooker – every time! Every ding-dong-diddly time (please consider this permission for a Henry/Flanders mashup). Throughout the entirety of this book, I consistently pictured Ruby’s father as being played by Micheal Rooker. Ruby in my mind was a blank child (as, admittedly, most children are in my mind – they’re mostly just small, loud, interchangeable clay lumpkins).

An absolutely fascinating story told through the eyes of a daughter as she records her thoughts and observations in her diary.  As her first person description is recorded with no filter, Ruby displays her life with chilling normality.  Isn't everyone's father a serial killer?  As her story unwinds and she begins to understand the action/ consequence of her father's "game" the tension builds.  LA Detwiler sucks the reader directly into this story.  You'll have to keep reading just to see how the story ends!